Yet his voice remains. As John F. Burns reported in The New York Times, the court where the trial of Saddam’s co-defendants goes on heard a recording of the dead man himself, discussing the good points of chemical attacks. (Poor Saddam—Nixon could have warned him: Just turn the damn tape recorder off.) “They’re very effective if people don’t wear masks.” “You mean they will kill thousands?” a minion asks. “Yes, they will kill thousands.” Hundreds of thousands, it turned out, by chemicals, bullets in the night, or the ordinary wear and tear of torture. It is possible that not even now is the daily death rate in Iraq higher than it was under the peace of Saddam Hussein, which was the peace of the tomb.

What has changed since our invasion in 2003 is that the monopoly of violence was broken up and replaced by a free market of evil actors. When we leave, if we leave in defeat, the violence will become much worse. We speak of the country splitting into three, Shiite, Sunni and Kurd, but partition is never easy. Ask Israel and the Palestinian Authority, or India and Pakistan. Ask the Confederate States of America. Breaking up is hard to do.

So President Bush, confronted with the tactical failure of the war, proposed new tactics. The news peg was the surge of 21,500 additional troops. Equally important will be rules of engagement that permit them to fight first and politick later. Before now, Mr. Bush said, “there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have …. This time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light” to do what they have to do, “ … and Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated.” (It would be nice to have been a fly on the wall during that conversation.) The third equally important element may be the willingness to shut down terrorists and weapons coming from Syria and Iran. The day after Mr. Bush spoke, American troops raided an Iranian visa office in the northern city of Irbil, no doubt on the hunch that it arranged more than package tours to scenic Persepolis. The only W.M.D. Saddam got to use were lowly chemicals; the mullahs want the big bang. We will have to reckon with them soon; we might as well warm up now. In this regard, it is noteworthy that Gen. John Abizaid’s replacement at Central Command is Adm. William J. Fallon. If you expect to choke the Strait of Hormuz, go directly to the relevant service.

It is possible that there is yet another secret component to Mr. Bush’s strategy—secret perhaps even from himself. Could his hidden allies be Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy and Jack Murtha—the Democratic leadership, and the bug-out true believers at their left hands? I am neither a scholar nor a traveler, but I have bought rugs from Turks, Berbers and Arabs, and in every shop the pattern was the same: After all the viewing and little white lies and tactical nitpicking and glasses of mint tea, you only make the deal when you’re out the door. Not pretend out-the-door, but the-heck-with-it-I’ll-go-to-the-next-place out-the-door. Then comes the handshake. Is it necessarily a bad thing that the larger half of America’s elite and the voters who support it are out the door already? Of course, Congress may take direct control of the war power, as it did at the end of the Vietnam War. As the 20th-century scholar E.S. Corwin wrote, the Constitution “is an invitation to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy.” Then it will be every Iraqi for himself.

In the casualties to come, from the brave men and women in uniform to basically everybody, if the bottom falls out, it is unseemly to speak of an idea, but let me risk it. President Bush’s second inaugural, and especially one sentence in it—“Eventually the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul”—was hammered by multiculturalists, paleocons and hard-headed supporters of Mr. Bush himself. They’re having a field day now. Mr. Bush told only part of the truth, and partial truths can be more dangerous than lies. But that does not drain them of the truth they do tell, which we should recover before consigning Muslims to wogdom and their world to friendly or unfriendly jailers.

The blood that flows in Iraq is not flowing from the Volk; it flows because of human nature, but it is not even yet flowing from local humanity as a whole. Specific actors, with specific goals, make it flow. They want power, and the money that comes from power, and they are willing to spend money and lives to get it. If they kill enough people along the way, then every man’s hand will be raised against every other man—and so would yours, in a similar nightmare. But most people most of the time want their daily bread, something for their children, and not to be beaten up by cops, goons or people who won’t let them shave their beards. Let’s kill as many bad actors as we can.

But Gerald Ford wasn’t even on a bumper sticker. The constituents of his Grand Rapids district had voted for him for Congress, and his Republican colleagues had voted for him for House Minority Leader, and that was it. He wasn’t a factor in the boisterous G.O.P. politicking of his time. Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, George Romney, Charles Percy, Richard Nixon (the ultimate winner)—these were the contenders in 1968. Spiro Agnew, Nixon’s Veep, and convert John Connally looked like coming attractions.

Then the fun of the second Nixon term began. Vice President Agnew was plucked from office by the long tentacle of home-state corruption (Alan Hevesi and Joe Bruno tip their hats in tribute). A replacement had to be found. President and Congress consulted the 25th Amendment, Section 2—“Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.” Representative Ford won 92 votes in the Senate and 387 in the House. That made 479 people who had voted for him with the Presidency in mind, but still not a one of them was an ordinary American in a voting booth. The candidate of the Socialist Workers Party does better than that. Then President Nixon was plucked from office by the long tentacle of his own self-destructive paranoia, so much more potent than any corruption. And now we had, after solemn deliberation and the blessing of the Constitution, an unelected President.

No one loved the Ford Presidency, but no one hated it either. When Jimmy Carter ran against Ford in 1976, he blasted Ford’s misery index (the inflation rate plus the unemployment rate—13.45 in 1976), but that was campaign hyperbole. (Carter’s own misery index four years later would be 20.76.) Ford did some things right, and he did some things wrong. He wasn’t brilliant, and he wasn’t crazy. He was the best President of the 1970’s, but consider the competition. No historian has ever put him in the fiery pit with James Buchanan.

This is a tribute to his class: homo politicus ordinarius. Gerald Ford became President by the closest thing to random selection that we have ever had. He was the generic officeholder, put in the hot seat. America reached into a dark closet full of politicians and grabbed Gerry Ford. We can take some comfort from that fact.

But surely there is discomfort to be had as well. The relative success of the Ford Presidency slyly undercuts the great ritual—once quadrennial, now perennial—of the American Presidential campaign. If we did all right with an unelected President, why go to the expense and trouble of electing them? If a group of insiders, or Vanna White, can spin a wheel and come up with Gerald Ford, why involve Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Frank Luntz, Evan Wolfson, George Soros, James Dobson, Andrew Sullivan, Al Sharpton, the farmers of Iowa, the villagers of New Hampshire, and the thousands of pundits, mavens, wire-pullers and confetti-throwers who comprise the great Presidential parade? Why bother us, the 120 million–plus voters?

The best historian of the American Presidency, Forrest McDonald, has asked this question with his accustomed darkness and wit. “There is no point in asking why Americans get caught up in the presidential election ritual even when the campaigns are obviously manipulative and the candidates are far from the best the country has to offer—just as it is pointless to inquire why ancient Romans accepted unquestioningly the divinations of soothsayers, or why tribal peoples believe in their totems, or why pentecostals have confidence in their healers. All rituals rest upon faith, not logic; all involve suspension of disbelief; and all seem as reasonable to the faithful as they seem absurd to unbelievers.” In Papua, they wear penis wrappers and eat people. Here we vote. God bless America.

But, pulling back from the black abyss, there is a reason not to go the Ford route except in extraordinary circumstances, and Mr. McDonald himself touches on it. The great advantage of the election ritual, over other rituals, is that we do get caught up in it, in a way that jibes with our fundamental principles. We are in this together; we are created equal; and when we lose our money, we learn to lose. My vote means next to nothing in the final result; as a Republican in New York City, I mean less than nothing, except when a Democrat chooses to call himself a Republican and runs for mayor. But my vote means something to me. It means I have put my fingerprints on this process. This is why we grant the process legitimacy, and why we are rightly concerned with fraud, chads, computer glitches and other threats to that legitimacy. That is also why the men and women we elect, give or take the mania that is an occupational hazard of the job, continue to pay attention to us, even though they have “the football” and hobnob with Bono. Individually, any one of us is nothing. But in the aggregate, anyone of us might be the marginal elector.

Maybe the most important thing about Gerald Ford was that, when he parachuted into the Presidency, he behaved with sufficient decency, humility and gravitas to keep his extraordinary position tethered to our expectations. R.I.P.

James Baker is an intelligent man, so it beggars belief that he favors every one of his simultaneously obvious and unlikely recommendations. (Sample: “Syria should control its border with Iraq.” Yep, it should. And all the young men of Al Qaeda should abandon the profession of mass murder and get engineering degrees. But how should we make it happen?) So what does Mr. Baker really have in mind?

Like many elder statesman, Mr. Baker wants to do what he did before. In today’s Middle East, that means restoring the Sunni alliance against Iran. Fear of Iran, as a powerful, aggressive and radical Shia state, is already out there. Mr. Baker seems to believe it can be mobilized in three steps.

Step one is to woo Syria. Syria has made itself a partner of Iran, having alienated its other neighbors and patrons. Yet the alliance is essentially unnatural, since Syria is about three-quarters Sunni. The Assads, father and son, made a family business of selling themselves to the highest bidder. Hafez al-Assad joined the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein. Now Bashar al-Assad has sold himself to the Iranians, but it should be possible to buy him back.

The second step in Mr. Baker’s plan is, as he said in another context, to “fuck the Jews.” The self-esteem of Sunni governments requires professions of loyalty to the Palestinian cause. So Israel will be wanded at the security checkpoint, to determine how much it will throw to Hamas and Hezbollah.

Step three will involve showing that the Iranians are unreasonable. This must be the purpose of Mr. Baker’s insistence that we talk to Iran, since he surely knows that anyone, like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who believes that he already talks to the 12th imam will not negotiate substantively even with James Baker. Once Iran stonewalls yet again, we can then turn to the Sunni world and say: We have brought your erring Syrian brother home; we have pressured your annoying Jewish neighbor; now let us link arms against the Shiite menace.

This was essentially the strategy of the United States after the Khomeini revolution, with a few blips, notably the Iran-contra back channel. What would be wrong with restoring such a plan now?

Its religious template is too sweeping. Although there is no love lost between the Shia and Sunnis, they are not monolithic masses. Instead of spending so much time on Syria, why not keep wooing Iraq’s Shiites? Most of them, far from being Iranian agents, have their own interpretation of their religion and their own ethnic identity (Arab, not Persian). Saudi Arabia’s richest oil regions are inhabited by that country’s despised Shiite minority; Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf, has a Shiite majority; why follow a strategy that pre-emptively alienates them?

More important, why abandon the region to such identity-bloc calculations? It is wrong to say that the desire for liberty is universal—or, as President Bush put it in his second inaugural, that “the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul”—yet it is equally wrong to leave it out of account. Culture, religion and tribes are mighty things—and not just in the Middle East—but they are not the only things. Men will commit every sacrifice and atrocity to maintain their old ways, yet they also want to better themselves. The media and the Internet stimulate both desire and thought. Lebanon’s communities have been fighting each other for centuries, yet most of them came together in a national movement to throw off Syrian overlordship. Hezbollah, with its Syrian/Iranian bankroll, has rallied crowds just as large. No one said freedom is easy. James Baker wants to take freedom to the dumpster and move on.

If George W. Bush doesn’t want to adopt the Baker plan, he will have to come up with a better one of his own. If present trends continue, he too will go down in history as a laughable mouse. Pressing need (the prospect of W.M.D. in Saddam’s hands) and high goals (the call of freedom) will not redeem the bad execution of the Iraq War.

We have played the Iraq War various ways. Gen. Tommy Franks drove to Baghdad and resigned. Paul Bremer fired the Iraqi Army and called a constitutional convention. A constitution got written, and most Iraqis rallied to it, but the men of blood continued their work. Lately we have been appealing to Sunni tribal leaders—with some success, though not enough. By this ass-backward route, we have arrived at the place we were in Afghanistan on Halloween of 2001, three and a half weeks into Operation Enduring Freedom, with everyone in a tizzy and the late R.W. Apple savoring the “the ominous word ‘quagmire.’” The solution then was to stop worrying about the effects of our actions on the long-term fate of the country and to kill as many Taliban as possible. Which we did, and which led to victory. (Yes, the Taliban are still out there; no one said freedom is easy.) The solution now is to put 30,000 troops into Baghdad, without stripping Anbar, and kill the enemies of order. If the generals say they don’t need 30,000 more troops, find new generals.

Livy was another old writer—a historian, not a poet. He said that when the ancient Romans were digging the foundations of a Temple of Jupiter, they uncovered a bleeding head (commemorated in the word capitol, which comes from caput, the Latin for “head”). The state begins in violence. Free states give way to order and peace, but they too begin there.

This is not international social work, or finishing a job. Since the violent in Iraq include Al Qaeda, and terrorist wannabes, killing them is a twofer. Let the end begin.

It can’t be comfortable. In the clinch, isn’t there more friction, and don’t those cold upstate bus-station urinals feel colder? On the other hand, you’ll never hastily stick a curl in your own zipper. But comfort isn’t the point. People have been suffering for fashion for thousands of years, and they will suffer for the fashions of Eros.

Pornography is not only a big business in itself—the figures I saw most recently said it had grown from a $10-million-a-year industry in the 70’s to a $10-billion-a-year industry today—but it leaks out into the wider world, influencing outerwear, advertising, slang. For example: Have you heard “fluffer” or “money shot” used metaphorically? Literally? Both? Welcome to now. Gianni Versace’s designs for women were influenced by Milanese streetwalkers, but that was so 80’s. Check the starlet du jour’s outfit du jour. This is pornography, nor are we out of it.

I was once asked what the founding fathers would do about pornography, and I tried to think of what was available in their own time. I couldn’t think of much. John Cleland’s Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, was first published in 1748-9, but I have come across no mention of a copy of it in any of the founders’ copious libraries. Of course, it would be just the sort of thing that descendants and curators would suppress. When Gouverneur Morris was living in Paris, his girlfriend gave him Voltaire’s poem La Pucelle to read. I skipped through it once with my fractured French, and though it is one long dirty joke about the virginity of Joan of Arc, it did not seem to be particularly obscene.

Morris’ girlfriend, the owner of the volume, was a married countess whose primary lover, and father of her child, was a Catholic bishop. And yet the hottest thing she could loan her American pal would be described by The New York Times as rated “R—Sexual situations.” At the same time, of course, the Marquis de Sade was shut up in the Bastille, dreaming his baroque torments. But even the French Revolution kept him under lock and key.

The founders lived with many evils that we have suppressed. Many of them bought and sold men and women; some of them slept with the women they bought. There has been a big drop in piracy, at least in American waters. The world sees real changes, and some of them are improvements. But honesty compels us to admit that other changes are for the worse.

Pornography bills itself as the pastime of free spirits. Why then do you always know, at the moment of every setup, what will happen next? Because pornography is bound to convention by the demands of the market—unless it is aimed at a “sophisticated” audience, in which case the demands of that market niche require slower-paced conventions. The production of pornography is as economically determined as the production of soft drinks—more so, because new flavors do come along now and then, while we’re still working with the same bodies we’ve always had. Everyone jumped on Judith Regan for her Juice cocktail and its gross payday, but next to the average pornographer, she was a crusading journalist, following the truth wherever it led. The last pornographer to work outside the straitjacket of his market was probably Sade, scribbling in his cell.

But Sade was the prisoner of his compulsions, which were as demanding as any audience. Philip Larkin wrote that life was a “three-handed struggle between / Your wants, the world’s for you” and “The unbeatable slow machine / That brings what you’ll get.” Pornography is a one-way tug of plumbing, hormones and whatever impressed you before the age of consent. Even long into adulthood, producers and consumers of pornography never pass the age of consent, apart from the initial decision to switch the toggle from OFF to ON. I and my many betters try to write, and hope you will read with understanding or pleasure. Porn writes us and reads us.

The law unleashed the new world of porn, and the law could tie it up again, though doing so seems in many cases difficult and possibly counterproductive. Lives are ruined by laboring in the porn industry, but we have had too many lawsuits against makers of food and legal drugs, like alcohol and tobacco. If eaters, drinkers, smokers and sex workers don’t destroy themselves with their eyes open, they at least do it freely (see switching the toggle, above). Tom Wolfe is as good a novelist as J.P. Marquand. If I Am Charlotte Simmons had to obey the decorum of Point of No Return, it would be different but no worse. But why bother?

It is possible, though, to shrink Pornotopia at the margins. Like any other industrial process, porn has side effects. Perhaps some of them are pollutants. Rudy Giuliani made just that argument as Mayor of New York, writing the zoning laws so that strip clubs and smut troughs had to be so many yards from schools or playgrounds; as a result, they were effectively shunted to remote industrial moonscapes. The civil libertarians fought him at every step, out of the fear, sincere but crazed, that if they come for Garter Belt Girls and I say nothing, the next step will be Auschwitz. Pornography is still in your child’s bedroom, but it isn’t on your block, and the killing hasn’t started. Rudy can offer this solution to Iowa and New Hampshire.

It can’t be comfortable. In the clinch, isn’t there more friction, and don’t those cold upstate bus-station urinals feel colder? On the other hand, you’ll never hastily stick a curl in your own zipper. But comfort isn’t the point. People have been suffering for fashion for thousands of years, and they will suffer for the fashions of Eros.

Pornography is not only a big business in itself—the figures I saw most recently said it had grown from a $10-million-a-year industry in the 70’s to a $10-billion-a-year industry today—but it leaks out into the wider world, influencing outerwear, advertising, slang. For example: Have you heard “fluffer” or “money shot” used metaphorically? Literally? Both? Welcome to now. Gianni Versace’s designs for women were influenced by Milanese streetwalkers, but that was so 80’s. Check the starlet du jour’s outfit du jour. This is pornography, nor are we out of it.

I was once asked what the founding fathers would do about pornography, and I tried to think of what was available in their own time. I couldn’t think of much. John Cleland’s Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, was first published in 1748-9, but I have come across no mention of a copy of it in any of the founders’ copious libraries. Of course, it would be just the sort of thing that descendants and curators would suppress. When Gouverneur Morris was living in Paris, his girlfriend gave him Voltaire’s poem La Pucelle to read. I skipped through it once with my fractured French, and though it is one long dirty joke about the virginity of Joan of Arc, it did not seem to be particularly obscene.

Morris’ girlfriend, the owner of the volume, was a married countess whose primary lover, and father of her child, was a Catholic bishop. And yet the hottest thing she could loan her American pal would be described by The New York Times as rated “R—Sexual situations.” At the same time, of course, the Marquis de Sade was shut up in the Bastille, dreaming his baroque torments. But even the French Revolution kept him under lock and key.

The founders lived with many evils that we have suppressed. Many of them bought and sold men and women; some of them slept with the women they bought. There has been a big drop in piracy, at least in American waters. The world sees real changes, and some of them are improvements. But honesty compels us to admit that other changes are for the worse.

Pornography bills itself as the pastime of free spirits. Why then do you always know, at the moment of every setup, what will happen next? Because pornography is bound to convention by the demands of the market—unless it is aimed at a “sophisticated” audience, in which case the demands of that market niche require slower-paced conventions. The production of pornography is as economically determined as the production of soft drinks—more so, because new flavors do come along now and then, while we’re still working with the same bodies we’ve always had. Everyone jumped on Judith Regan for her Juice cocktail and its gross payday, but next to the average pornographer, she was a crusading journalist, following the truth wherever it led. The last pornographer to work outside the straitjacket of his market was probably Sade, scribbling in his cell.

But Sade was the prisoner of his compulsions, which were as demanding as any audience. Philip Larkin wrote that life was a “three-handed struggle between / Your wants, the world’s for you” and “The unbeatable slow machine / That brings what you’ll get.” Pornography is a one-way tug of plumbing, hormones and whatever impressed you before the age of consent. Even long into adulthood, producers and consumers of pornography never pass the age of consent, apart from the initial decision to switch the toggle from OFF to ON. I and my many betters try to write, and hope you will read with understanding or pleasure. Porn writes us and reads us.

The law unleashed the new world of porn, and the law could tie it up again, though doing so seems in many cases difficult and possibly counterproductive. Lives are ruined by laboring in the porn industry, but we have had too many lawsuits against makers of food and legal drugs, like alcohol and tobacco. If eaters, drinkers, smokers and sex workers don’t destroy themselves with their eyes open, they at least do it freely (see switching the toggle, above). Tom Wolfe is as good a novelist as J.P. Marquand. If I Am Charlotte Simmons had to obey the decorum of Point of No Return, it would be different but no worse. But why bother?

It is possible, though, to shrink Pornotopia at the margins. Like any other industrial process, porn has side effects. Perhaps some of them are pollutants. Rudy Giuliani made just that argument as Mayor of New York, writing the zoning laws so that strip clubs and smut troughs had to be so many yards from schools or playgrounds; as a result, they were effectively shunted to remote industrial moonscapes. The civil libertarians fought him at every step, out of the fear, sincere but crazed, that if they come for Garter Belt Girls and I say nothing, the next step will be Auschwitz. Pornography is still in your child’s bedroom, but it isn’t on your block, and the killing hasn’t started. Rudy can offer this solution to Iowa and New Hampshire.

We will have to deal with them differently, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The Bush administration can’t write any more checks. It was clear that some shift, at least at the level of tactics, was desirable; now it has become inescapable. Thumpin’ concentrates the mind.

Some of the victorious Democrats have a clear idea of what that shift should be. George McGovern will be meeting with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group of some 60 left-wing representatives, to discuss how to bring all American troops home from Iraq by June. Mr. McGovern famously lost his Presidential run in 1972, during the Vietnam War, but his advice to come home, America, was taken less than three years later; as a result, Arlington filled with restaurants and Cambodia filled with skulls.

Most Democrats, while they are happy to profit from the modern antiwar movement, do not want to be defined by it. Hence the popularity of military men and women in their ranks. Wesley Clark did not win the nomination in 2004, but he did better than Dennis Kucinich. John Kerry, who did win, ran with a salute. Some of the party’s brightest winners last week—James Webb, Tammy Duckworth—are veterans. Joe Lieberman is no vet, but he ended up beating Ned Lamont, the bug-out millionaire who beat him in the August primary.

If these Democrats and a chastened commander in chief could agree on an Iraq strategy, it would probably be 20 months of counterinsurgency, then call it a day. The G.O.P. would not want to run on an Iraq war in 2008, and the Democrats would not want to deal with one if they won the White House. The idea of handing Iraq off to a toughened, savvy Iraqi Army sounds good, could work and was the goal, even of the hated Donald Rumsfeld, all along. Perhaps the United States would keep a base in Kurdistan, the place we are popular, to project power on an as-needed basis. The weakness of such a plan is that, to the extent it is driven by a deadline, the terrorists, who have calendars too, will prepare for the day of the jubilee when they divvy up the country—Al Qaeda–stan for the Sunni Arab terrorists, Sadr-stan for their Shiite opposite numbers. In that scenario, the Kurds and any troops we leave among them would be sitting ducks.

But there is also the possibility of bigger deals, which might make the pill go down more smoothly. The politician who has been in the wilderness longer than Nancy Pelosi, and who is even hungrier for power, is James Baker. He has been coming up in the rear-view mirror for months now, as co-chair, along with former Democratic representative Lee Hamilton, of the Congressionally appointed Iraq Study Group; President Bush met with him and his fellow students Monday. “There is urgent need,” the Iraq Study Group’s Web site says, “for a bipartisan, forward-looking assessment of the situation in Iraq.” By “bipartisan,” the Web site means that the Iraq Study Group consists of Republicans and Democrats, but it is bipartisan in a deeper sense: It will advise the second Bush administration, from the point of view of the first.

The big deal that Mr. Baker has been working for appears to have three elements. He wants a sit-down between the United States, on the one hand, and Iran and Syria, on the other. Since Iran and Syria are the primary enablers of bloodshed in Iraq, it would indeed be an excellent thing if we could get them to back off. They have no incentive to abandon their schemes, however, unless a second thing happens—persuading Europe, Russia and China to support punitive sanctions on the Iranians. If these measures fail, Mr. Baker’s fallback would likely be the regional strategy of the first Bush administration: a Sunni alliance against the Iranian menace. The shield of that alliance in the old days was, of course, Saddam Hussein. Since he is gone, we would have to muddle along as best we could.

The new direction, if I foresee it correctly, has a number of obvious problems. It assumes that enough important Iranians are motivated by the ordinary calculus of profit and loss. The worst thing in the world, wrote Thomas Hobbes, is “continual fear and danger of violent death.” Many Iranian leaders these days certainly agree; they have the sleek look of clerical hucksters. But what about the true believers, including President Ahmadinejad, who hope to live in paradise with the 12th imam, with whom they commune even now? If Iran can be pressured, why should Russia or China help pressure it? They are perfectly happy to leave the problem in our laps. (Europe, in theory, might be equally happy to leave it there, but must consider that it is within range of Iranian missiles.) Idealism, finally, would fall into the wastebasket of old inaugural addresses. The notion that the Middle Eastern public could be offered ordered liberty as an alternative to despots or mullahs would give way to our old assurance that brown people neither deserve nor desire it. Sinful to speak of ideals when soldiers die. But the deaths will come, in Iraq or Manhattan, whether we are idealistic or not.

Whatever Mr. Baker advises, Congress commands or Mr. Bush does, this administration can look forward to one more solid accomplishment: Saddam, judged by his peers, swinging from a rope. Let it be seen, by subjects and their masters, throughout the Middle East. It will be a marker for the long war, even if we lay down no others in the next two years.

We will have to deal with them differently, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The Bush administration can’t write any more checks. It was clear that some shift, at least at the level of tactics, was desirable; now it has become inescapable. Thumpin’ concentrates the mind.

Some of the victorious Democrats have a clear idea of what that shift should be. George McGovern will be meeting with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group of some 60 left-wing representatives, to discuss how to bring all American troops home from Iraq by June. Mr. McGovern famously lost his Presidential run in 1972, during the Vietnam War, but his advice to come home, America, was taken less than three years later; as a result, Arlington filled with restaurants and Cambodia filled with skulls.

Most Democrats, while they are happy to profit from the modern antiwar movement, do not want to be defined by it. Hence the popularity of military men and women in their ranks. Wesley Clark did not win the nomination in 2004, but he did better than Dennis Kucinich. John Kerry, who did win, ran with a salute. Some of the party’s brightest winners last week—James Webb, Tammy Duckworth—are veterans. Joe Lieberman is no vet, but he ended up beating Ned Lamont, the bug-out millionaire who beat him in the August primary.

If these Democrats and a chastened commander in chief could agree on an Iraq strategy, it would probably be 20 months of counterinsurgency, then call it a day. The G.O.P. would not want to run on an Iraq war in 2008, and the Democrats would not want to deal with one if they won the White House. The idea of handing Iraq off to a toughened, savvy Iraqi Army sounds good, could work and was the goal, even of the hated Donald Rumsfeld, all along. Perhaps the United States would keep a base in Kurdistan, the place we are popular, to project power on an as-needed basis. The weakness of such a plan is that, to the extent it is driven by a deadline, the terrorists, who have calendars too, will prepare for the day of the jubilee when they divvy up the country—Al Qaeda–stan for the Sunni Arab terrorists, Sadr-stan for their Shiite opposite numbers. In that scenario, the Kurds and any troops we leave among them would be sitting ducks.

But there is also the possibility of bigger deals, which might make the pill go down more smoothly. The politician who has been in the wilderness longer than Nancy Pelosi, and who is even hungrier for power, is James Baker. He has been coming up in the rear-view mirror for months now, as co-chair, along with former Democratic representative Lee Hamilton, of the Congressionally appointed Iraq Study Group; President Bush met with him and his fellow students Monday. “There is urgent need,” the Iraq Study Group’s Web site says, “for a bipartisan, forward-looking assessment of the situation in Iraq.” By “bipartisan,” the Web site means that the Iraq Study Group consists of Republicans and Democrats, but it is bipartisan in a deeper sense: It will advise the second Bush administration, from the point of view of the first.

The big deal that Mr. Baker has been working for appears to have three elements. He wants a sit-down between the United States, on the one hand, and Iran and Syria, on the other. Since Iran and Syria are the primary enablers of bloodshed in Iraq, it would indeed be an excellent thing if we could get them to back off. They have no incentive to abandon their schemes, however, unless a second thing happens—persuading Europe, Russia and China to support punitive sanctions on the Iranians. If these measures fail, Mr. Baker’s fallback would likely be the regional strategy of the first Bush administration: a Sunni alliance against the Iranian menace. The shield of that alliance in the old days was, of course, Saddam Hussein. Since he is gone, we would have to muddle along as best we could.

The new direction, if I foresee it correctly, has a number of obvious problems. It assumes that enough important Iranians are motivated by the ordinary calculus of profit and loss. The worst thing in the world, wrote Thomas Hobbes, is “continual fear and danger of violent death.” Many Iranian leaders these days certainly agree; they have the sleek look of clerical hucksters. But what about the true believers, including President Ahmadinejad, who hope to live in paradise with the 12th imam, with whom they commune even now? If Iran can be pressured, why should Russia or China help pressure it? They are perfectly happy to leave the problem in our laps. (Europe, in theory, might be equally happy to leave it there, but must consider that it is within range of Iranian missiles.) Idealism, finally, would fall into the wastebasket of old inaugural addresses. The notion that the Middle Eastern public could be offered ordered liberty as an alternative to despots or mullahs would give way to our old assurance that brown people neither deserve nor desire it. Sinful to speak of ideals when soldiers die. But the deaths will come, in Iraq or Manhattan, whether we are idealistic or not.

Whatever Mr. Baker advises, Congress commands or Mr. Bush does, this administration can look forward to one more solid accomplishment: Saddam, judged by his peers, swinging from a rope. Let it be seen, by subjects and their masters, throughout the Middle East. It will be a marker for the long war, even if we lay down no others in the next two years.

Reconstruction was the post–Civil War effort to extend the rights of citizenship and suffrage to Southern blacks. The 14th and 15th Amendments had written these rights into the Constitution, but they were continually challenged by the resistance of Southern whites. In September 1874, for example, 3,500 members of the White League of Louisiana battled local police and black militiamen in New Orleans, capturing city hall, the statehouse and the arsenal, until federal troops put them down. Many Northerners sympathized: “the insurgents,” wrote The Nation, “had … plainly the right on their side.” After the midterm elections, however, the Grant administration lost all heart for such exertions. “The ‘let alone policy’ seems now to be the true course,” wrote Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican politician in 1875. Two years later, Hayes would succeed Grant as President.

There are many issues at play in next week’s midterm elections: pages, macaca, winking blondes, sons’ penises. But the Iraq war throbs under them all like a subway. It was the war that stripped Senator Joe Lieberman of his party’s nomination, and that gave James Webb his new party’s nomination. Voters and commentators alike are right to look it in the face.

Is it better that we invaded Iraq, killed Saddam’s sons, and put him on trial for his many crimes and murders? It is. Saddam Hussein was an aggressive brute, waging war on his people and his neighbors. He was the host and paymaster of terrorists; as time passed, he decked his regime in Islamist clothing (he put a verse of the Koran on the Iraqi flag). Saddam had used one weapon of mass destruction—poison gas—and his scientists pursued others; he defied U.N. resolutions to come clean. He was a menace to Iraqis, to the region and to us. It is good that we pulled down his statue and that children beat the fallen head of it with their shoes; it will be better when he is in an early grave.

Should we have stayed in Iraq to stabilize it after toppling Saddam? The Union had a duty to concern itself with the fate of Southern blacks after the Civil War because they lived in the United States; Iraqis don’t. Yet it is not in our interest to leave a Muslim nation in chaos and despair. Muslims live everywhere; Muslims, we learned one late-summer day, can fly. It is beyond the power of outsiders to repair the political systems of six time zones or to reform a religion of a billion plus. But if we could help send a message of hope in the country we had invaded, it was worth trying.

Have we had any success? Millions of Iraqis have bravely voted in three elections, defying the threats of terrorists and gangsters to gun them down at the polls. The Iraqi politicians they elected have hammered together a government. They aren’t always effective, but they too have been brave: Terrorists murdered the sister of one Iraqi vice president and the brother of another (our politicians call themselves brave when they attack earmarks). A majority of Iraqis wants responsible self-rule. But armed minorities, both Sunni and Shiite, want to rule all by themselves.

What more can we do? We have to be as flexible as the terrorists militarily. Gen. George Casey is considering asking for more troops in Baghdad, the epicenter of violence. Don’t be shy, general. We should assign more troops as advisors to Iraqi units. There are 4,000 serving now; there would be a greater multiplier from eight. It is possible to learn such lessons; the British did, fighting 20th-century insurgencies in Malaya and Oman.

The American and Iraqi governments will have to settle with Moqtada al-Sadr, the murderous Shiite cleric. President Bush spoke of establishing benchmarks in his press conference last week, which wrung a protest from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Naturally, Mr. Maliki was obliged to say that, as the leader of a sovereign state, he is not beholden to other leaders’ benchmarks. Nevertheless, trying to battle terrorists when one terrorist (Mr. Sadr) is a member of Mr. Maliki’s coalition in Parliament is like … well, like giving the House of Representatives to a Democratic Party that included the White League of Louisiana.

We must find some way to deter Syria and Iran from stirring the pot. Iran is a patron of Mr. Sadr, while Syria has been the transmission belt for Sunni thugs. Deterring Iran will become much more difficult once it develops an atom bomb, something that will happen soon since we seem to have no obvious plans to stop it. Perhaps Syria is more squeezable.

Will any of these tasks become easier with a Democratic Congress? If ever there was a man by temperament impervious to political hardship, that man is George W. Bush. He seems to be made of solid brass. Mr. Bush will press on if the Republicans fall to a 179-seat deficit in the House. Foreigners don’t necessarily know that, however. The terrorists who brought down the Spanish government with the Madrid train bombings might feel that they had made an encouraging test run for 2008.

We should not let the levers in our voting booths be pulled by terrorists. If we have better men and women to put in place, we should put them there, and let the world draw whatever mistaken conclusions it likes. Are the Democrats better? Is bouncing Christopher Shays out of Congress, or keeping a sleaze like Robert Menendez in it, going to freshen our minds and renew our spirits? I didn’t think so either. The war is right, Mr. Bush is determined to fight it, and Congressional Republicans are his best colleagues.

Why are the Democrats sailing to such a clean sweep? St. Augustine’s Press, a conservative Catholic publishing house, addresses the question in Squandered Opportunities: New York’s Pataki Years, a survey of the career of the man Mr. Spitzer will replace, Republican Governor George Pataki. It’s hard to think why a Catholic press, whose list runs to Aquinas and Averroes, would devote a whole book to an American lame duck, unless they were interested in Catholic politicians who are pro-abortion; although there are so many of those, why pick on George Pataki? The author, however, is George Marlin, historian and stalwart of the New York Conservative Party (he ran for Mayor of New York City in 1993). The author picture shows him standing beside a reproduction of Holbein’s famous portrait of Sir Thomas More. Next to Mr. Marlin, the saint looks a bit easy-going. Mr. Marlin knows where the bodies are buried, and he exhumes them all.

George Pataki has been with us since he defeated Mario Cuomo in 1994. Mr. Marlin pays tribute to the Governor’s political talents—maybe not enough. Mr. Pataki had to fight his way through a crowd of Republican hopefuls, winning the approval of such disparate powers as Senator Al D’Amato, the kingmaker, and New York’s tiny but vocal conservative intellectual movement; then he had to win the approval of the voters. He threaded every needle, smooth as silk.

Then it was time to govern. Mr. Marlin, who is a banker when he is not writing books, focuses on economics. Governor-elect Pataki faced a $4 billion budget gap, which had been hidden by the Cuomo administration and left as a little surprise package. Nevertheless, in his first two years, he managed to pass two budgets lower than Mario Cuomo’s last, while cutting some taxes. If there is a hero in Mr. Marlin’s book, it is Patricia Woodworth, the budget director during this period. Even then, there were signs of trouble: To “Pataki insiders, ‘true believers’ were dangerous and never to be trusted …. Woodworth was suspect because she actually believed in the cause of downsizing government.” Midway through Mr. Pataki’s first term, re-election loomed and his fiscal discipline vanished. Why bother, since the Clinton market was rocking and rolling and tax receipts were pouring in? In 1998, one state finance watchdog gave New York an F for “relying on current good times continuing forever.”

Times have stayed pretty good in New York City, which has Wall Street through thick and thin, enhanced by the Giuliani/Bloomberg anti-crime wave. But the bad times have gripped upstate with an icy hand. State and local taxes (many of the latter mandated by Albany) are crushing; business is dying; people are fleeing. “The only growth north of Orange County,” Mr. Marlin notes, “has been in the prison population.”

Mr. Marlin sourly surveys other issues. On abortion, George Pataki is like Mario Cuomo, only without class. “Cuomo … genuinely struggled to rationalize a distinction between his duties as a practicing Catholic and his duties as a public servant …. Pataki has never revealed any philosophical soul-searching in determining his positions.” At Ground Zero, Mr. Pataki left a hole. “Such an undertaking required the vision, skills, and tenacity of a Robert Moses …. Pataki’s disengaged, ceremonial approach to management” couldn’t cut it. But Mr. Pataki has some accomplishments: He passed hate-crime legislation. “It is conceivable,” he said at the signing ceremony in 2000, “that if this law had been in effect one hundred years ago, the greatest hate crime of all, the Holocaust, could have been avoided.” SCENE: a disheveled office of some kind. Lugers, armbands, swastika flags. HITLER buttonholes GOERING, GOEBBELS. “Gott in Himmel! Ve cannot burn ze synagogues or lynch ze pawnbrokers; it is verboten—by law!”

Along the way, Mr. Marlin speculates, not always ferociously, as to why George Pataki was so ineffectual. Most of his pre-gubernatorial career was spent in the State Assembly, in the impotent Republican minority. Assembly Republicans “had no responsibilities. Pataki never passed a meaningful piece of legislation affecting state-wide policy and never learned the processes of state government. As a result, he was accustomed to having the freedom to say anything he wanted in press releases. Because they had no impact on day-to-day governing, it just didn’t matter.”

Once he became Governor, he never reached out to fiscally conservative Democrats. “The administration never ‘schmoozed’ … suburban and upstate Democrats, never dined with them or drank with them.”

Mr. Marlin’s summary may be useful to Iowa’s Republican caucus-goers in 2008, if Mr. Pataki’s Presidential ambitions last so long. “George Pataki is not a Conservative. He isn’t even a real Republican. He’s not a Democrat or an Independent or a Right-to-Lifer or a Green.” He has belonged instead to “Albany’s dominant political party. He’s an Incumbocrat”—a party of three drunks: the Speaker of the Assembly (a Democrat), the Senate Majority Leader (a Republican), and the Governor (variable), holding each other up on the backs of the taxpayers.

George Pataki has left the New York G.O.P. in shambles. He has also stunted the New York Conservative Party—a point Mr. Marlin passes over in silence, no doubt out of respect for his Conservative friends and associates. In the resulting vacuum, the only political question in New York is: Who will roll up the larger margin—Eliot Spitzer or Hillary Clinton?

Let Mr. Pataki’s record be a caution to his successor. Mr. Spitzer has even less political and executive experience (he has been a prosecutor, a lawyer, and the State Attorney General). Will he be the censorious outsider that Albany needs? Or will he be taken for a ride?

Why are the Democrats sailing to such a clean sweep? St. Augustine’s Press, a conservative Catholic publishing house, addresses the question in Squandered Opportunities: New York’s Pataki Years, a survey of the career of the man Mr. Spitzer will replace, Republican Governor George Pataki. It’s hard to think why a Catholic press, whose list runs to Aquinas and Averroes, would devote a whole book to an American lame duck, unless they were interested in Catholic politicians who are pro-abortion; although there are so many of those, why pick on George Pataki? The author, however, is George Marlin, historian and stalwart of the New York Conservative Party (he ran for Mayor of New York City in 1993). The author picture shows him standing beside a reproduction of Holbein’s famous portrait of Sir Thomas More. Next to Mr. Marlin, the saint looks a bit easy-going. Mr. Marlin knows where the bodies are buried, and he exhumes them all.

George Pataki has been with us since he defeated Mario Cuomo in 1994. Mr. Marlin pays tribute to the Governor’s political talents—maybe not enough. Mr. Pataki had to fight his way through a crowd of Republican hopefuls, winning the approval of such disparate powers as Senator Al D’Amato, the kingmaker, and New York’s tiny but vocal conservative intellectual movement; then he had to win the approval of the voters. He threaded every needle, smooth as silk.

Then it was time to govern. Mr. Marlin, who is a banker when he is not writing books, focuses on economics. Governor-elect Pataki faced a $4 billion budget gap, which had been hidden by the Cuomo administration and left as a little surprise package. Nevertheless, in his first two years, he managed to pass two budgets lower than Mario Cuomo’s last, while cutting some taxes. If there is a hero in Mr. Marlin’s book, it is Patricia Woodworth, the budget director during this period. Even then, there were signs of trouble: To “Pataki insiders, ‘true believers’ were dangerous and never to be trusted …. Woodworth was suspect because she actually believed in the cause of downsizing government.” Midway through Mr. Pataki’s first term, re-election loomed and his fiscal discipline vanished. Why bother, since the Clinton market was rocking and rolling and tax receipts were pouring in? In 1998, one state finance watchdog gave New York an F for “relying on current good times continuing forever.”

Times have stayed pretty good in New York City, which has Wall Street through thick and thin, enhanced by the Giuliani/Bloomberg anti-crime wave. But the bad times have gripped upstate with an icy hand. State and local taxes (many of the latter mandated by Albany) are crushing; business is dying; people are fleeing. “The only growth north of Orange County,” Mr. Marlin notes, “has been in the prison population.”

Mr. Marlin sourly surveys other issues. On abortion, George Pataki is like Mario Cuomo, only without class. “Cuomo … genuinely struggled to rationalize a distinction between his duties as a practicing Catholic and his duties as a public servant …. Pataki has never revealed any philosophical soul-searching in determining his positions.” At Ground Zero, Mr. Pataki left a hole. “Such an undertaking required the vision, skills, and tenacity of a Robert Moses …. Pataki’s disengaged, ceremonial approach to management” couldn’t cut it. But Mr. Pataki has some accomplishments: He passed hate-crime legislation. “It is conceivable,” he said at the signing ceremony in 2000, “that if this law had been in effect one hundred years ago, the greatest hate crime of all, the Holocaust, could have been avoided.” SCENE: a disheveled office of some kind. Lugers, armbands, swastika flags. HITLER buttonholes GOERING, GOEBBELS. “ Gott in Himmel! Ve cannot burn ze synagogues or lynch ze pawnbrokers; it is verboten—by law!”

Along the way, Mr. Marlin speculates, not always ferociously, as to why George Pataki was so ineffectual. Most of his pre-gubernatorial career was spent in the State Assembly, in the impotent Republican minority. Assembly Republicans “had no responsibilities. Pataki never passed a meaningful piece of legislation affecting state-wide policy and never learned the processes of state government. As a result, he was accustomed to having the freedom to say anything he wanted in press releases. Because they had no impact on day-to-day governing, it just didn’t matter.”

Once he became Governor, he never reached out to fiscally conservative Democrats. “The administration never ‘schmoozed’ … suburban and upstate Democrats, never dined with them or drank with them.”

Mr. Marlin’s summary may be useful to Iowa’s Republican caucus-goers in 2008, if Mr. Pataki’s Presidential ambitions last so long. “George Pataki is not a Conservative. He isn’t even a real Republican. He’s not a Democrat or an Independent or a Right-to-Lifer or a Green.” He has belonged instead to “Albany’s dominant political party. He’s an Incumbocrat”—a party of three drunks: the Speaker of the Assembly (a Democrat), the Senate Majority Leader (a Republican), and the Governor (variable), holding each other up on the backs of the taxpayers.

George Pataki has left the New York G.O.P. in shambles. He has also stunted the New York Conservative Party—a point Mr. Marlin passes over in silence, no doubt out of respect for his Conservative friends and associates. In the resulting vacuum, the only political question in New York is: Who will roll up the larger margin—Eliot Spitzer or Hillary Clinton?

Let Mr. Pataki’s record be a caution to his successor. Mr. Spitzer has even less political and executive experience (he has been a prosecutor, a lawyer, and the State Attorney General). Will he be the censorious outsider that Albany needs? Or will he be taken for a ride?